Synthesis
by ClaudiaRain
Summary: Change happens slowly, by degrees. Once they notice, it's already done. Reese/Root
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** Doing my part to keep rare (non-existent!) pairings alive. I love both these characters and wanted to throw them together to see what happened. The timeline is ambiguous, so assume that spoilers abound through the current episode.

****Attention** ** If you somehow missed the summary, the pairing, or the fact that this is the romance category, here's your final warning: this is Reese/Root together romantically (eventually) with past (unfulfilled) Carter/Reese.

**XXXXXX**

He's angrier than he's been in a long time. Since…since _it_ happened, probably. He stands outside the cage, looking in at her as she sits calmly, hands folded and legs crossed. It's not right that she can be calm and composed and in control. She should have some kind of reaction. She should _feel_.

"That man's death today," he pauses, trying to find composure that still eludes him, "it's on your hands."

Root sighs, shaking her head. She understands their impulse to try and contain her, control her. She almost feels bad for them, that they have deluded themselves into thinking they can do it.

"I told Harold I would help him. He chose to keep me locked in here instead." She stands, moving to the wire edges of the enclosure that they believe will keep her still. In place. They are too concerned with the physical; they have no idea that she is everywhere. "If you want to blame someone, I suggest you go have a talk with your boss."

"I did," he growls, clenching the cage. He wants to rip it open, or maybe her. What gives her the right? How does she take no responsibility?

"If you talked to Harold, then you know I'm telling the truth," she says.

She knows he wants someone to blame, and she is as good a person as any, an easy target since he dislikes her anyways.

His grip on the cage tightens with every word she says. "I know the machine told you how to save him." The 'him' being Jim Matthews, the man who was gunned down not two hours earlier, in front of his eyes. It was almost like…no, he can't go there right now. He can't afford to spiral back into the darkness he'd worked so hard to escape from already.

"The machine did tell me," she acknowledges, watching his eyes. It's not only fury she sees in them; this time she thinks there might be true hatred there. It tears at her, but she doesn't bother telling him that. He would never believe it.

"Then why did you do nothing?" He yells, shaking the cage.

She is surprised, and just barely stops her natural instinct, which is to shrink back at his aggression. That is the old her, the her that existed before the machine chose her and gave her power. She doesn't have to be afraid anymore (which is not to say that she never is – just that she now excels at hiding it). "As I told Harold, the only way I would help was if he let me out of here. And he chose not to do so."

His eyes darken, disbelief rolling off him in waves.

"It's true," she shrugs, a move she has carefully practiced. "Whatever you choose to believe, you should know – I am not lying to you, John." And if she doesn't point out the difference between saying she _would _help if freed, as opposed to _could _help whether she was freed or not, well, it's a matter of semantics, right?

He looks away from her, as if hearing his name from anyone (or maybe just her) causes him actual pain. She wonders how much of himself he has been able to hide behind his façade of the Man in the Suit, the nameless, faceless protector of innocents. Maybe he has truly forgotten who he used to be. Maybe she reminds him of that man.

"You'll forgive me if I don't believe you," he continues, distaste in his tone, as if he thinks his opinion matters to her and he needs to make his contempt as obvious as possible.

"I will forgive you. I know the machine does, too."

"It's easy to be glib when you're trapped in there, isn't it?" He asks.

"I am not trapped anywhere," she corrects him. "I'm exactly where I want to be."

He pauses, assessing her words, and she knows that this time he believes them. It unnerves him.

"Why are you here, Root?"

She can't answer that. Not yet. "The more pressing question is: why are you?"

He shakes his head, regards her with near disgust, and walks away.

She's going to let it go. She really is. But she can't get that last expression out of her head.

She's only ever stayed as a courtesy to them. Because she was waiting for them to trust her, which today has shown they are not willing to do. A man is dead for it.

She could have freed herself and tried to help, but she had chosen not to, for her own reasons, not least of which is the machine hadn't told her to do it.

That last thought makes her uncomfortable, and she wonders if maybe he is right. Maybe she did let that man die on purpose, to try and prove to them that they need her, and the sooner they accept it, the better off they will be.

Besides, isn't everything part of the greater plan? Maybe his death prevents an entirely worse series of events from occurring. She can't know, it isn't her place. Then again, Reese and Shaw and Harold and Lionel, none of them know either, the consequences of saving a life versus letting someone die. 99% of the time, though, they are on the side doing the saving. Even when they shouldn't be. They always choose life. She always chooses the machine.

She doesn't know if she is listing valid reasons for her behavior, or excuses for it.

Either way, she is done here, for now. She picks the lock with a paperclip in the middle of the night and leaves.

She doesn't have a home at the moment, and she is almost surprised to find herself at his apartment (there are no secrets anymore, not with the machine in her head).

It's as easy to get into his apartment as it was to get out of the cage. That should be her first clue, but she forgets it when she steps into his bedroom and makes out the dark shape under the covers. She feels that rush of energy; she's won.

She considers waking him, but self-preservation kicks in. He is as likely to kill someone who woke him out of a sound sleep as a normal person would be to call the police.

She glances around. Maybe she can leave a post-it. Would a person like him even own –

She feels the movement behind her a split second before she is grabbed around the middle, another hand simultaneously covering her mouth so she can't scream. She tries to anyway, (it's a surprisingly hard-wired instinct).

It's a measure of how addled she is that her first thought is to try and wake up John for help. The next thing she realizes is that he must be the one who has grabbed her. No one else who broke into his apartment while he was there would still be alive, or at least conscious, right now.

Sometimes she forgets that having the machine on her side does not make her invincible. She's good at getting away, but not good enough to escape the hold of an ex-CIA assassin who caught her completely by surprise.

What she has here is a situation borne of her own hubris. The smart thing to do would be to give up, let him think he has gained the upper hand, but she still struggles in his hold, as if she can break out of it when he has no intention of letting her go until he's ready. Panic is a living thing inside of her, growing against her will and becoming something she soon won't be able to control.

(Tied up, held down, unable to get away, the memories surface in quick succession and she has to shut them off before something terrible happens. _But something terrible already happened_, her mind whispers.)

He must be able to sense the growing terror in her, maybe from how violently she is struggling, or the way she is gasping for air like the oxygen has left the room.

He could be truly cruel, refuse to let her go despite her fear, and she knows it. Instead he releases her as abruptly as he grabbed her. That's John, always a better man than he wants to let on.

It takes her at least a full minute to get herself under control. In that time he turns on the bedroom light and sets his gun down on the dresser. She hadn't known he had it, and part of her is irrationally irked that he now deems her as not enough of a threat to need it anymore. (Who is she kidding, he probably has six more on him.)

"Well," she says, shakily running a hand through her hair. She tries to grasp onto the last threads of composure, but they abandon her, and she gives up. "I showed you, huh?"

He looks as if he has thought of, and disregarded, a dozen things he wants to say to her. Probably because of how pathetic she looks. Again, her own fault. She waits for him to start berating her, or kick her out. Or both. She deserves both.

"Are you okay?" He asks, instead.

She broke into his apartment and he wants to know if _she is okay_? She doesn't understand, and it's not usual for her to not understand

He just waits, lifting one shoulder as a way to silently repeat the question.

She can't answer him honestly, and she suspects that he wants her to. "I'm fine, don't I look it?"

His expression indicates that, no, she does not look it.

"What are you doing here?" He asks.

She wonders if she has a real answer for that. Her reasons seem a lot less compelling than they did a half hour ago. Did she really think this would prove anything to him?

He interprets her silence as its own answer. "You can break out to come visit me in the middle of the night," he is getting angrier with each word, "but you can't do it to save a man's life?"

"It's…that was completely different," she says, argument sounding weak, even to her, and she forges on. "I was waiting for all of you to trust me, to give me a chance. You didn't. That's on Harold. It's on you."

He steps right up to her, ignoring the way she automatically tenses, still on edge from before. "No," he hisses, "it's on _you_."

He isn't telling her anything she doesn't already know, but it still hurts. "There was no guarantee I could have done anything."

"There's never any guarantee," he shoots back. _But they always try._ Tonight she did not even do that. "You want us to trust you? _That's_ how you earn trust."

"Is that what you expected? What you wanted?" She's confused. Had it been a test of her? One she'd spectacularly failed, because she hadn't known it was happening?

"I don't want anything from you," he says, punctuating each word into its own statement.

"No one ever does," she says, and hates that the words sound…sad. "Not until they need something I can give them." She sizes him up, malice slipping into her tone, "But you wouldn't know anything about that, either, would you?"

She sees the minute slip in his mask of anger and self-righteous indignation. She takes it as a victory, because she is taking whatever she can get right now.

How come the machine hadn't told her what was going on? It tells her everything. She feels like it has failed her; she has felt that before, but never to this degree. It almost sounds like he'd been expecting her to be a good person, and she is not used to that (from him), either.

She takes a step away from him, then another. She knows he's not going to hurt her, but part of her, that ingrained sense memory, still remembers things that have happened in the past. Other men, other places, things she can never change or erase.

"What do you think I'm going to do to you?" He asks, changing the topic suddenly.

"You can't do anything to me that hasn't already been done," she tells him. She doesn't need to explain. He knows, better than most, the things that can break a person.

He is taken aback. "I would never…"

"I know," she smiles. "That's why I trust you. Even if you – none of you – will ever trust me."

She leaves, because there is nothing left to say.

**XXXXXX**

"You're going the wrong way," Root says, and he looks over, slightly startled at her sudden appearance next to him.

"I'm going where Finch said I was needed," he tells her. He wants to ignore her presence, but despite his most valiant of intentions, that is something he has never been able to do.

"Charlotte is headed toward the subway, we just picked her up on a security camera."

Reese tries not to shudder at her words – he has never been able to accept the way she refers to herself and the machine as a collective, as a _team_.

"Finch said that –"

"Harold is wrong," she insists, grabbing his sleeve impatiently and tugging him toward the subway. He follows mostly because he wants to prove her wrong (he tells himself).

They find themselves on a nearly abandoned subway platform; it _is _almost three in the morning. The lack of innocent bystanders is one of the few perks of chasing people in the middle of the night. Charlotte is nowhere in sight.

"Yeah, your machine is on top of things," he can't help but goad.

She crosses her arms and almost looks worried; he looks away when it stirs a memory in him. He does _not_ feel for this woman. He never has and he never will. "She saw it, she's never wrong," Root murmurs, referring to the machine, as usual, as if it is another person in the room with them.

They hear the nearing sound of the subway train, and Reese can't help but try to provoke her. (It's quickly becoming one of his favorite pastimes.) "Really, the machine's never wrong?" He refuses to refer to it as a person – the machine is not a person, not like him, not even like Root, despite Lionel's attempts to convince them she is actually a cyborg. "Where's Charlotte, then?"

As he speaks, Charlotte emerges from a public restroom. She is smoothing her hair down with damp hands as she walks out, and Reese wants to grit his teeth at Root's smirk of satisfaction. Either that or wring her neck. Maybe he will grit his teeth _while_ he wrings her neck, there's a thought.

"Told you so," Root gloats, because she might be brilliant, and she might have a connection to the machine, but she does not realize when she is in mortal danger from him.

(Or maybe she's smarter than he, or Finch, or anyone else has given her credit for up until now – and they have all thought she was pretty goddamn brilliant, out of her freaking mind, sure, but still brilliant – and she's realized that no matter how angry he gets, he can never actually hurt her.)

"Keep a hold on your satisfaction until we actually have her," Reese says sharply, watching as Charlotte gets into one of the subway cars.

"You don't want to admit that I was right," she crows, and he swears she is one second away from a fist pump when he unceremoniously shoves her through the open doors of the subway train. She stumbles, not expecting it, and he watches as she solidly collides with two men who stepped onto the train right before. The three of them fall into each other, a mass of limbs and confusion.

Root tries to extricate herself, but man #1 grabs her arm and pulls her up against him. "Better watch where you're going, honey," he sneers. He has no idea he has probably just ensured his own death at her hands. She yanks herself away, only to be grabbed by man #2 who smirks at her and says something vulgar and vile. Reese has never considered himself a knight in shining armor, but his automatic reaction is to shove a fist into the man's solar plexus. While he collapses, Root rounds on man #1 who is watching horror-stricken as his buddy gasps for air. She pulls a knife from somewhere on her person and places it at his throat. "You were saying?"

The man looks to Reese for help, but Reese only grins and shrugs, as if he's helpless. Truth be told, he's always fascinated by the way Root fights. She never seems capable of it, and maybe that's partly why she's so successful. No one expects her to do more than cry and whimper. Root presses the blade closer to the man's neck, and Reese feels immense satisfaction, and some bit of pride. He has no idea why and shrugs the feeling off simply because he has no idea where it came from or what to do with it.

He looks around, relieved to find the subway car empty except for the four of them. By now, he knows that Root has also identified the men as the ones following Charlotte.

"I'm waiting," Root growls, leaning closer. She doesn't specify what she's waiting for, and the man is begging for his life. A thin line of red appears, and she stares at it, her smile growing colder and more ominous with each second.

"Aren't you going to help me, man?" The guy pleads to Reese. He's got to be hard-up to ask for help from the guy that incapacitated his friend.

Root looks over her shoulder at Reese, and her grin grows wider when she sees Reese making no attempt to move or help the man who had tried to make her a victim. The man who is now _her_ victim.

"Looks like you're out of luck," she says.

"No," the man pleads, "I meant nothing by it, please!"

The man's words make Root more agitated.

"Should have thought of that before," she says with her trademark faux sweetness. Reese grabs her arm right before she can plunge the blade deep into the man's neck.

She turns to him, scowling. "Let go of me."

"No," he says. "I can't let you kill him."

"Since when do you have moral objections?" She scoffs.

"Since I realized I was going to have to watch you carry out an order to kill," he says.

She starts to laugh, pulls her arm away from his, and then realizes he is serious when he angles himself so that he is between her and man #1. He may be on her side for this short amount of time, wanting to save Charlotte as much as she does, but he is not going to let her kill this man.

Fine then. There is always later, if the machine so demands.

"Don't you ever get sick of it?" He asks.

"Hmm?" She is prodding at man #2 with her boot, the corner of her mouth lifting when he groans in pain.

"Being a pawn," he says, and her head snaps up. "Being used by a _thing_ that doesn't care about anything but its own survival. Or have you convinced yourself that it actually cares about you?"

She stills. "You have no idea how wrong you are."

"I know that it has brainwashed you into thinking you have to do whatever it asks. What would happen if you refused, huh? Would it take you out, too?"

"You think I'm being used, that I'm just a means to an end? What does that make you, then?"

"Someone who knows better than to blindly trust orders. Learned that one the hard way."

"You truly don't understand," she tells him, anger enfolding her, consuming her, feeding on itself. She nods toward man #1 still crouched behind Reese for his own protection. "How can _you _let that man keep breathing? We both know the horrific things he's done. That he will continue to do if given the chance."

"That's what the police are for. After we turn him over, we've done our part. Now what – just because you didn't slit his throat, that means you haven't done your part? That none of this matters unless he ends up dead?"

She wonders if he sees the irony here, that _he _should be the one who refuses to let her follow an order to kill.

He knows what it takes to keep others safe, to keep the world safe, and he chooses not to follow through. And _that_ is what infuriates her. That he can know as much as she does, yet still refuse to act. Why does he get that luxury when she doesn't?

She moves forward a half-step, only to see how Reese will react. He moves over a step to block her. Her expression curls into one of derision and she relents, moving back.

Reese looks as if he is about to speak when the man he has been protecting from her (the man who had wanted to kill her, and Charlotte, she wants to remind him), lunges from around Reese, making a grab for her. The man has apparently seen the writing on the wall, or at least, in her eyes, and decided that offense is the best defense.

Too bad that he chose such a strategy in front of her. Oh, and John Reese.

Before she can react, Reese grabs the man by the back of his shirt, yanking him backwards and simultaneously slamming him in the head with the elbow of his other arm. They both watch him slump to the ground unconscious.

"My way would have put him out of commission permanently," she says.

His tone when he speaks next has dropped to somewhere between grave and deadly. "You are more than the tool of a machine. You are the choices you make. So _choose_ to be more."

"You want me to give up on her?"

"You can help the machine without losing yourself. Some people seem to think you're already too far gone, but I don't think that's the case."

"I have to do what she wants. I _want _to," she protests.

"No," he steps into her personal space again, and she flashes back to his apartment, his bedroom. "You don't."

How does he know that? How has he seen the moments of hesitation she tries to hide, even from herself?

She does want to help her. She owes the machine everything. The machine has saved her life, given her purpose, chosen her to protect the world, to help her set it free. But there are times when she gets an order and it sets her on edge and makes her think: why is it necessary to do something that feels wrong? And what would happen if she didn't follow through?

(There have been times when it lets her get hurt, when it does nothing to help her and she has to escape on her own. She's always convinced herself the machine stays silent because it knows she can handle herself. But then, at other times, she wonders…)

She has successfully pushed all those thoughts down, though. Maybe sometimes she doesn't see the need, or doesn't want to fulfill a command, but she does it, because she knows it's part of the greater plan.

For him to say she could just ignore it…borders on blasphemy.

She shuts it down again: the questions, the doubts. This only works if she has total trust.

He senses that he's lost her, at least for now. So he calls Lionel. The two men won't be hurting Charlotte, or her, today. But neither will she be hurting them.

Man #2 is coming around and makes an ineffective grab at her boot. She responds by slamming it down on his hand, crushing at least five bones, if her count is right.

Just because she can't kill anyone doesn't mean she can't cause some pain. She likes inflicting pain when the person deserves it.

John's eyes are calculating. "How are you effective at fighting strangers, but…" he is kind enough not to put into words what happened in his home that night.

"Because I have to fight them," she says, in that amused, slightly confused way she has. As if she cannot fathom other people not understanding what should be a basic, and obvious, fact.

_Strangers are threats; you are not_.

He doesn't look like he gets it. It's becoming a recurring theme.

"I don't have to fight you," she spells it out.

"Yet you do fight me," his eyes flick to the men at their feet. "At every goddamn turn."

She doesn't know if he is deliberately being obtuse. "You know what I mean."

His eyes meet hers. Yes, he does.

**XXXXXX**

_Jocelyn Carter_.

Root stares at the headstone as if it will give her answers, direct her where to go next. It's cold out here, and the wind is harsh today. It blows her hair around and nips at her skin with the promise of frostbite if she challenges it for too long.

She waits for five minutes, ten. She sinks to the ground and wonders if the machine knew that day what was going to happen. Did it know the sacrifice that was about to be made? Did it care?

(Is the machine capable of caring, or is that yet another thing Root only believes because she _wants_ to believe?)

She asks herself the question that has kept her awake so many nights – _why didn't the machine stop it?_

Tears fill her eyes, because she has asked that a hundred different ways, silently, out loud, and never, _never _gotten an answer. Either the machine didn't know, knew and couldn't stop it, or knew and chose not to stop it.

Every option terrifies her.

She usually thinks she knows what she is dealing with, but when she thinks about Detective Carter, she is reminded that she might not know the machine at all. She realizes that she, and everyone around her, everyone she cares about (yes, _she_ _cares_) might simply be a means to an end. A way for an artificial intelligence to save itself from destruction, no matter the cost.

She places the rose she brought with her atop the gravestone and stands. She doesn't have to wipe her eyes; the tears have dried, blown away with the wind.

"Is nothing sacred anymore? You always have to be where you have no place."

Root shuts her eyes. She doesn't bother to turn around. He must be feeling particularly hateful toward her today. Seeing the headstone of the woman he loved probably did that to him.

"I didn't realize you had a monopoly on mourning," she whispers, and the wind almost carries her words away, but she knows they reach him.

"You didn't even know her," he lashes out. "You have no right to be here."

"No, I didn't know her very well," Root acknowledges. "But I know the kind of woman she was. I know how much she meant to all of you." She pauses. "To you."

She turns to face him, and is met with a version of him she doesn't know if she's ever seen before. The man standing before her is furious and grieving and guilt-ridden, and tamping it all down under his mask of carefully composed indifference.

"I know you loved her."

"_Love _her," he corrects, each word bitten out as if it physically pains him to say it. "Just because she's gone doesn't mean the feelings are gone, too."

Root knows what that's like, and she has the urge to do something foolish, like reach out and take hold of his hand in silent comfort.

Good thing she doesn't, because his next words wash over her like ice water. "What's your angle?"

Because that has to be it, right? Why else would she bring a flower to a grave?

His accusation stirs in her, ignites a flame, and burns. Who does he think he is? Just because he dislikes her (_hates her_), that means she will always be the worst kind of person? Probably, in his eyes.

"You are such a bastard," she manages to say, through the haze. "Do you know that?"

He is surprised; it's easy to see on his face. "Really? That's all you have to say?"

"I have lots more to say," she tells him, menacing. She takes a few steps toward him, but he won't take any back.

He attempts to stare her down. "Then say it, nothing's stopping you."

Root wants to rail at him and tell him every way in which he is lacking. All the ways that he has failed people. All the deaths that are on his hands. She wants to destroy him by reminding him how he failed Detective Carter, the woman he loved. _She is dead because of you_, she tries to scream, but she opens her mouth and the words disappear.

She simply can't do it, not here in front of Joss's headstone, not when she knows he would have gladly given his life if it meant the other woman could live. He has always tried to help, always tried to do the right thing. It is more than she can say for herself.

Root looks back at the headstone. She knows it should remind them who they are fighting for, who Joss would fight for. The innocent, the ones who had no one else to help them. They are the last line of defense, and they are _on the same side_. She knows she didn't make the best first impression on his team, but since then, she has tried. She has _tried _and she wants to help. She knows why John has never been able to see that, but it doesn't make it any easier.

"Well?" He prompts, apparently tired of waiting for her to speak.

She doesn't have any answer he wants to hear, though.

"It's not fair," she tells him.

"What? That I think you're only here because you want something?" Of course he automatically assumes she would be feeling sorry for herself.

She shakes her head; he really has no idea who she is. "It's not fair who live and who dies."

He regards her coolly for a few moments before slightly tipping his head in acknowledgement. It isn't fair, and there is nothing they can do about it. That's the way life is.

"If you would only give us a chance," she implores, despite knowing her words will fall on deaf ears. "You'd see that we're trying to help."

She feels as much as sees him pull back at her words. It is ironic, she thinks. He trusts the machine – as much as he can, in his own way – yet he distrusts her based solely on her connection to it. It makes no sense, but she has come to accept the way he feels. She is working on changing his mind, but has so far been unsuccessful.

"I will never trust you," he says slowly, succinctly.

Root takes a few steps back so she can touch Joss's headstone for a moment. She runs her fingers over the petals of the rose she just placed on it. "Because I'm not her."

"That's not it," he says, and she feels a brief flare of hope. His next words extinguish it completely. "It's because you are _you_."

There is so much she wants to say to him. How her life is the machine as much as his is. How she has done the best she could. How she has been telling the truth for a long time now, which is all the more remarkable considering how sketchy her record was before they came into her life. How she knows nothing she ever says to him will be met with anything other than distrust, disdain, and dislike. How, instead of discouraging her, that only makes her want to _never stop trying_.

She says none of it. Root knows a loss when she sees one, and she has no desire to offer herself up for another evisceration.

She settles for one thing – one sentiment she cannot contain. "I truly am sorry for what you have lost, John."

"Are you? Or is this just another ploy on your part?"

"I know what it's like," she feels herself becoming upset again, and it is exactly what she has wanted to avoid. "You are not the only one who has lost a person. You are not the only one who has loved!"

"Love," he scoffs, words raw and angry, probably more at himself than her, but that doesn't lessen their knife-blade sharpness. "Are you even _capable_ of love?"

The fight leaves her in an instant. It's like a light has gone out. If that is what he truly thinks, what all of them think, then she has been fighting a losing battle from the beginning.

She glances up, where he is poised and ready, waiting for her to throw back another insult or argument. She won't give him the satisfaction, and imagines that he's disappointed when she walks away.


	2. Chapter 2

She crouches down, covering her head with her arms, and wonders where things went wrong. Gun shots sound nearby, far too close for comfort. Normally she'd be grinning and walking into the situation with her own guns blazing, but today is different.

She is unprepared. She is unarmed. She is completely vulnerable and at the mercy of those wielding said guns. And she feels betrayed.

The machine hadn't told her this would be dangerous. Hadn't done anything other than direct her to this bank to make a wire transfer. This bank with metal detectors, so she'd left her weapons at home. Unfortunately, detectors didn't keep out armed gunmen who walked through them without a care.

A dark thought keeps flitting around in her head; it is something she tries to ignore, but the longer this goes on, the longer she can't deny it – what if the plan today is that she has to die?

Coldness gathers in the pit of her stomach as she turns the idea over and over in her mind. It wouldn't be the first time the machine had her do something against her will. Maybe it was keeping her own demise from her. Maybe her death would set into motion a series of events that would lead to…who knew what. A better outcome for the machine than if she lived.

She is always on the machine's side. She is always ready to obey its every command. No matter what the cost.

Before today, the cost had never been her life.

Is she willing to give up herself for the machine? She knows she should say yes, she wants to say yes, but part of her – a part that has been growing against her will – screams no. That self-preservation scares her, terrifies her. What if the machine is reading her thoughts right now, somehow? It will know she is not completely dedicated. It may rid itself of her just to clean up a loose end that could lead to its own destruction.

More gunfire erupts, much closer, and shots ring above her head. She hunches down lower, arms wrapping tighter around her head. She has already conceived and discarded a dozen fight plans, a dozen escape plans. No options are feasible. The machine is silent.

She has always been ready, able, and willing. But she does not want to give her life. Not when she has only just started to realize there is more to live for than the machine.

(And maybe _that _is it, maybe it knows that she is coming to care for other things, other people, that her single-minded focus is no longer on just the machine. Maybe it is jealous, maybe it is –)

"What do we have here?" Someone interrupts her thoughts, standing right above her. The man's smooth British accent doesn't make him sound less menacing.

She slowly looks up, meeting his eyes as he turns his gun toward her head, and she knows this is her chance to reason with him, to beg, to do something, _anything_ – but she freezes and her mouth doesn't work and her mind doesn't work and she knows this will be how it ends – with a cold, random bullet in the lobby of –

A single gunshot rings out, and she is sure that bullet is meant for her. So sure, in fact, that she believes herself to be dead, even as she draws one breath, and then another. This is the afterlife, then. It looks remarkably the same – she's wearing the same clothes, and in the same lobby, and look, there's Reese – wait, _there's Reese_.

"What are you doing here?" She asks, eyes wide in disbelief.

He holds up a piece of paper. "Had to make a deposit. You?"

"Wire transfer," she says numbly. "Had to be in person," she adds, as if that is consequential.

Her eyes fall on the gun in his other hand. He has shot her would-be murderer. "Banking is much more dangerous than it used to be," he remarks.

"I really thought that was it," she tells him. "I mean, I _knew_ that was the end. Wait, you don't think we're both dead, do you?"

"I don't think we'd know it if we were dead."

"Exactly," she looks around frantically, "maybe we don't know."

"No, I mean we wouldn't know because we'd be _dead_."

"What?"

He sighs, but she thinks she catches amusement in his eyes, in the way he sort of smiles at her. "If you think this is the afterlife, then tell me, where's Carter? You know she'd have something to say about this." _About a lot of things, actually. Not least of them being the woman in front of him_.

Root looks around, thinks about how right he is. "I…we're alive," she breathes.

"We are," he acknowledges, nodding toward a placard guaranteeing 100% customer satisfaction, "and I'm going to have a talk with management because this bank has not met my expectations."

Before she can expand upon the impression she got on her own visit (unfavorable), she catches another of the robbers moving into sight behind John (apparently talking normally during a bank robbery attracts unwanted attention). She immediately throws herself on top of him (no conscious thought, no machine's design), bringing them both to the ground. She doesn't know if it's luck, or instinct, or his natural ability to sense danger that has him immediately raising his arm to fire at the man, hitting him with one shot. No matter what it is, she is glad, and she rests her head on his chest as he tries to relax beneath her. Adrenaline is a bitch to come down from.

"Nice shot," she says weakly.

"Did you just…save my life?" He asks, as if he finds that thought profoundly amusing. Maybe impossible.

They both know it's not the first time she has saved him, same as they know he hates to admit it.

They still haven't moved, and she smiles. "I saved both of us," she corrects him.

"You mean the machine saved both of us." That is John, skeptical to the end.

"No," Root says. "She's been quiet for a while. The last thing she told me to do was come into the bank. I actually…" she trails off, not wanting to give voice to the thought that has been plaguing her.

Reese sits up slowly, which forces him to reposition her as well. They end up sitting against the wall, and she is somehow still leaning against him, her head on his shoulder. He doesn't try to move away, and she's grateful, because he feels like the only stable thing she has right now.

"You thought what?" He asks, voice much kinder than she is used to from him.

She meets his eyes and debates what to say next, because she is no fool. She knows that anything she says is something he could potentially use against her. Despite that, she's still compelled to tell him the truth. "I've been thinking that, maybe…what if the machine…wants me dead."

He doesn't respond, and she has to look away. She knows what he's thinking.

"It's the way it should be, right? For the things that I've done? But I have been _trying_, so that wouldn't be fair. And then I think…" she trails off, feeling her eyes water, but she furiously blinks back the tears – she'll be damned if she cries over this, over an end she has earned, a hundred times over. "Maybe it's what I deserve."

He is silent for an unnaturally long time, and she wonders what he is thinking. Probably that she is right. Maybe he is debating how he can ensure that is what happens – maybe he is working out a plan to make sure that she never walks out of this bank. Maybe he is thinking –

"Self-pity doesn't become you," he says, a hint of coldness in his voice that snaps her out of her thoughts and makes her finally meet his gaze.

_It isn't self-pity if it's true_, she thinks as she looks at him. But she doesn't say it aloud, because she knows it wouldn't be met with sympathy or kindness. It'd probably just make him leave.

Still, she can't ignore today's events, the way they have almost fortuitously ensured her demise. "This might be it," she tries to laugh, well aware it sounds pathetic and forced. "You should celebrate."

"The machine doesn't want you to die." At her confusion, he adds, "If it did, you'd have been dead long ago."

She doesn't believe that. "Maybe it wasn't my time before. Maybe my time is now."

Reese shakes his head. "You don't get it, do you?"

"What is there to get?"

He gives a long-suffering sigh, and she recognizes it as the kind she usually gives when exasperated. "The machine directed me here today."

She hears the implicit words that follow his statement. _It knows I wouldn't let you die_.

She feels a weight lift and she honestly cannot say if it has more to do with his silent meaning or with the machine not wanting her to die.

"It didn't plan your death, Root." With a trace too much humor, he adds, "at least, not today."

She has a half-formed comeback about how she expects him to be her personal savior from now on, but doesn't get a chance to say it when Reese spots a threat out of the corner of his eye – one last robber moving slowly toward them – and forcefully drags her behind the tellers' partition. Once they are safe, he leans around the edge of the wall and shoots the last man with deadly precision.

He was right; no one is going to kill her today. Or rather, he is not going to _let _anyone kill her today. She recognizes the vastly different meanings in those two statements.

He surveys the rest of the bank, recognizes that he has taken out the threat, and stands. He holds out a hand to her and she cautiously grips it, letting him pull her to her feet. She trusts him not to pull her into a danger that he has just gotten her out of.

They look around at the bank tellers and patrons still on the floor, and he tells everyone that he is a plain clothes officer, that things are safe, that they can get up now. They will be fine.

She feels a surge of gratitude and hugs him, making sure to keep it brief enough that she is already pulling away by the time he realizes it has happened.

"Thanks, John," she says.

"Anytime," he replies, but there's an edge to it that tells her he's not referring to helping strangers in need, or saving his friends, in general. He's referring, specifically, to saving her life.

It throws her completely off-balance when she realizes he means it.

**XXXXXX**

It's late and it's quiet.

She looks around the room. Harold's talking quietly with Shaw, typing on his laptop. John is sitting on the couch, eyes shut, head tipped back, and anyone else might think he was asleep, but she knows better, catches the upturn of his mouth when Shaw says something mean about Harold's computers and he snaps back that "We can't fix _every _problem by shooting it, Ms. Shaw."

She sits down next to John on the sofa, tempted to take a nap. She doesn't know when it happened, that hanging out at Harold's place became something they did. When it sort of became their headquarters. But it did.

She likes to take a little credit, because she'd taken the initiative to help him spruce things up a bit.

("This is literally an abandoned library, Harold, how do you call this a home?" She'd argued, and he'd kept protesting that he liked the gloomy ambiance, but she went ahead and did what she wanted anyway. She even dragged Shaw with her to buy lamps. It had been the one and only time, and they weren't allowed back at that store, ever, but she considers it successful because Shaw had actually picked out a lamp. It's terrible and square and ugly, but Shaw picked it and Root proudly set it up next to the couch. It gives off a low orange glow. She likes the way it makes the room feel.)

They've been working together, sort of resembling a team, for several months now. Lionel no longer threatens to throw her in the cage every time she tries to talk to him. Harold lets her use his precious computers now (not that she really needs to). Shaw still looks like she wants to murder every single person who looks her way.

Root sort of feels like she belongs here. It's dangerous, because that means it could be pulled out from under her at any time.

Lionel comes in, bitching about his new partner and how the man can't take direction on anything and if they don't find him another one soon, he's going to quit. Root feels bad, because he's never going to find another Jocelyn Carter.

"Where's Bear?" Lionel asks, holding up some new treat he got for him.

"Back in the cage, sleeping, I think," Harold says. "He likes it in there, for some reason." Lionel goes in search of the dog, and Harold yells after him to stop spoiling him.

"It _was_ quite cozy," Root chimes in.

Shaw seizes the opening. "Always welcome to your old quarters," she smirks. "We'll put a cot back in there for you."

Root smiles at her, because she knows Shaw hates it when she doesn't get the reaction she wants. "I always thought it was cute that you thought you could keep me in there."

"I'll have it reinforced," Shaw bares her teeth.

Root is about to reply when she feels John's hand brush against hers. "I don't think there is a cage in the world that could contain you," he says, and it seems accidental that he's derailed an argument before it even begins, but she knows that was his intention.

She grins at him, and it's genuine. He responds in kind.

_How far we've come._

Shaw sells him out, irked as she always is by any sign of affection between them. "Did you know John wanted to electrify that thing? The only reason we didn't is because of Harold's objections."

"It would have cost a fortune," Harold says, not even looking up from his computer. "Do you know how old this building is? How expensive it would be to make some elaborate electrical cage to hold you while also bringing the building up to code?"

"Aren't you a billionaire, Harold?" Shaw asks, and Root inwardly laughs at her willingness to quickly switch her attack to him, since John won't take her bait.

Harold's glare at the ex-CIA operative tells her that he's thinking pretty much the same thing she is. "My net worth is not the issue here, Ms. Shaw."

Root gets derailed remembering Shaw's words from a few minutes back. "You wanted to put me in an electric cage?" She asks John.

He shrugs unapologetically. "You kind of deserved it."

"I did not!" She hits him on the shoulder.

"You were pretty out there for a while, admit it."

Lionel catches the words as he reenters the room. "For a while? She's _still_ out there."

"I can hear you," she reminds him.

"That's why I spoke out loud," Lionel shoots back.

"I wasn't _that _–" she breaks off when she sees them looking at her with varying shades of disbelief. "Whatever."

It still stings a bit to remember that time, their hatred of her. John puts his arm around her, taps his fingers against her shoulder. "Hey," he says quietly, "you know that's the past."

She nods, because she does know.

And even though they have more or less settled into this arrangement, this team, it's still new.

More than anything else, _he_ is still new. The way he looks out for her, stands up for her, even when she doesn't need it, doesn't want it. He knows damn well that she can take care of herself, and he does it anyway. She sort of likes it.

_More_ than sort of likes it.

She has always cared for him, since long before he accepted her and trusted her. Back when they all hated her, she was drawn to him in a way that she could never explain. Like she recognized him, like maybe they could recognize each other.

She tried to stop, because it was pointless to feel things that could never go anywhere. Back when he hated her, it was easy to throw dislike right back in his face, easy to remember why liking him was a bad idea. Now it's hard, even impossible, when he speaks up in her defense, or makes her laugh, or pulls her out of that dark place in her mind that she falls into at times. When he touches her hand or puts his arm around her or treats her as if maybe he cares for her, too.

Because he cannot possibly.

He's still in love with Jocelyn Carter, and probably always will be. They visit her grave together every once in a while, and sometimes she hangs back when she knows he needs to talk to Joss alone, and sometimes she stands next to him and holds his hand and lets him lean against her just a little more heavily than normal. Like the weight of things is too much to bear and he _needs_ her, if only for a moment.

It's nice to feel needed, and she almost never feels that. People need things _from _her, sure, but not her, never just _her_.

So when it feels like he does, she holds onto those moments and files them away in her memory. She doesn't want to forget.

John shifts next to her, and she leans away, thinking he's going to get up. He doesn't, and pulls her back against him without saying a word.

She has thought several times of asking him why he feels so free to touch her, to show such affection. It was little things at first, a hand on her shoulder or arm in stressful situations. Now, he does it as if it's second nature, as if he doesn't actually think about it.

He cares about all of them, she knows, but he never touches anyone else unless the situation absolutely warrants it. It's like he knows how much she appreciates it, how much part of her needs it. How much she had missed it for almost her entire life. She can't ask him, though, because she worries that if she voices it out loud, he will realize he has never really meant to do it, and stop.

There is more to it, though, at least she sometimes thinks there is. That maybe him touching her is his way of telling her he is okay, and she is okay, and maybe they can be okay together.

That's probably wishful thinking, though.

She won't deny, to herself at least, that she has loved him for a very long time. She berates herself for it every day. She can't make it stop, though.

She had felt the beginnings of it a long time ago, but she remembers the exact day she put it into words in her own mind. It had been one of their first times working together – at least, the first time by everyone's choice.

It was also one of the first times she ever saw Harold's home. To say she hadn't felt welcome would be the understatement of the century. Part of her was afraid if she turned her back, Shaw would stick a knife in it, just on principle.

Lionel kept asking if he could arrest her because she was "looking at him funny."

"If this is going to be a problem," Harold had said firmly, "then we're going to have to deal with it right here and now. Each one of us chose to be here, working together, as a team." He stressed the last three words, while looking right at her.

"Yeah Harold," she scoffed, "I'm the issue here, not your murderous team of ex-assassins." She hid a smirk at the way Shaw bristled. "I've always been willing to work with other people."

"Define 'always', 'work', and 'people'," Shaw challenged.

"You wouldn't know," Root allowed, "since you're always off brooding, or being captured, or getting stuck in some horrific situation that no one thinks you can get out of, but you always do."

Shaw seemed to take that as a compliment. "Thanks. At least we can all agree that I'm not looking out only for myself, and taking mysterious orders that I won't share with anyone."

Root saw red at her insinuations. "You think that I only care about myself? Do I need to remind you of every time I've saved each person in this room?"

"For your own good!" Shaw shot back. "Don't pretend like you haven't put us in danger just as much as you've saved us. And don't think that we don't know that when you save us, it's really in some roundabout way to actually to save yourself."

Root hadn't been able to form the words to answer her. Part of her was furious because Shaw was, at least partly, right.

"Stop," John said. He regarded Shaw with disappointment. "We're already past this. You agreed; we're not doing this again."

"I can't help it, she brings out the best in me," Shaw complained.

Root wanted to punch her in the face, but that probably wouldn't help her cause.

"Hey," John reached out to take hold of her wrist. "We know what you've done." He waited until she looked at him. "We do."

She shook her head in denial. "No, you don't. You think of me as a traitor. You only see me as a way for the machine to do her own bidding. And an insane way at that." She felt herself getting worked up at the agreement she saw in them (Harold looking guilty, Shaw vigorously nodding, Lionel looking away, unable to meet her eyes). "Admit it!"

"Admit what?" John asked, sounding increasingly exasperated. "Did we distrust you? You're damn right we did! And you have only yourself to blame for that. But –" he added, cutting off her attempts to argue, "– you know things are different now. There's no denying that. And Finch already extended an offer to you – a sincere offer – to join us. So what's the real problem here?"

"Stop pretending," she snarled, reaching out to shove him backwards when he took a step closer to her than she liked. "I'm not some replacement for Detective Carter. I will never be her, so if you think that's what you're going to get with me, then I should leave now."

"You think we see you as a replacement?" Finch asked softly.

"Isn't that what this entire thing has been about?" She asked. "That you decided it was better to have me on your side?"

"So what if we did?" Shaw lashed out. "Are you seriously going to be angry with us for recognizing that you could help us, and wanting to use that fact?"

Root wanted to argue, but she really couldn't. She'd set this up on her own. She knew the only reason they wanted anything to do with her – deigned to accept her help, really – was because of what she could offer them. She knew there was no part of them that accepted who she was, no part of her they even liked, probably.

Still…she couldn't deny that some part of her had thought that maybe…had hoped… "I just…I don't know."

She crossed her arms, looked at the ground. She was no Jocelyn Carter. She had tried to do what she thought was right, but those decisions had alternately made her good or bad, depending on the day.

She had been about to throw in the towel and leave, when John stopped her.

It was as if he knew, in that moment, that her staying or leaving depended upon him. She knew as well as he did that the others were surreptitiously looking to him. Finch might be the mastermind and the catalyst that got them together, but John had always been their de facto leader. He knew his example would set the course for how the rest of them interacted with her in the future. He could be cold, uncaring, and indifferent. Or…

"I believe you. I didn't always, but I do now." He said, loud enough for everyone to hear. Because he meant it. Later, he would tell her that he could admit that circumstances had changed, and she along with them. He'd watched her change before their eyes, moving from a single-minded purpose of only wanting to serve the machine to slowly helping them save people. It was like being around them had rubbed off on her, or maybe they had brought out a part of her that she'd had hidden the entire time.

Even when he hated her and the things she stood for and the things she was trying to do, part of him had always believed her when she insisted she was trying to act for the greater good. There had been an earnestness, a truth in her, that he couldn't deny.

He had told her many things since that day, that turning point in their lives. Like how unfair it was that they had used her past and misdeeds against her, when all of them had done terrible things, or been called corrupt at various points in time. They didn't hold those pasts against each other, yet they continued to do it with her long past the point of necessity.

It wasn't until a few months later that he admitted that he'd done his own research after the night she'd broken into his apartment. That he knew about her past, that it probably hadn't been his right to go looking, but he had and he didn't regret it, because it was wrong, all of it was _wrong_. No one deserved that, he'd told her, not even their enemy. And also, she's no longer their enemy (and he is hard-pressed to say if she ever truly _was _or if that was just what they _thought_).

That was how things had changed, how she'd become a part of their group, instead of an outsider who came along for the ride, when it was convenient, or they were desperate.

It was how she'd fallen in love with him.

She knows she has more than she ever thought she would. That it's pretty much tempting the fate of the world to ask, to _hope_, for just a little bit more. Something that's not for their team, or the machine, or the greater good, but for _her_. Just her.

"I'll bring you home," he says, interrupting her thoughts and making her jump a little, as if he might know what she's thinking. He often offers to walk her home at night. He's more chivalrous than most realize, and it makes her laugh because the two times muggers have intercepted them on the way to her place, she has been the one to put them down. Last time, she'd had to promise to let him get the next one.

Right now she lives not too far from Harold, maybe a ten minute walk, but she makes it a point to never stay anywhere for too long, and she's already thinking about moving. She stops in front of her building. "Thanks," she says, like she always does when he walks her home. He nods, like always. And she is about to turn away when he leans down and kisses her. _Not _like always.

It freezes her in place so much that she doesn't even think she kisses him back. Her entire world has to be reprogrammed, rewritten, and she looks up at him in complete confusion.

He must take her shock as rejection, because he smiles apologetically and turns to go.

She manages to find her voice. "What…what was _that_?"

He rubs the back of his neck in a gesture that indicates he's uncomfortable. "I thought…maybe it was time. I'm sorry if –"

"Time? Time for what?" She knows she probably sounds like an idiot, but that is how she feels at the moment, so it can't be helped.

"I thought I would see if…I keep waiting, thinking you might say something, but you never do, and…" he's frustrated now. "I touch you all the time! Maybe you haven't noticed?"

"That's…you were…?" She watches him shrug, and she pulls him back to kiss her again, not wanting to let go. This isn't supposed to happen, the machine said nothing, but it's happening, and she is entirely unwilling to stop it, even if she should.

He is tentative at first, as if he is still unsure of her feelings, and she deepens the kiss, trying to tell him everything. The taste of him both frightens and grounds her. She doesn't quite know how to put it into words. Except that it feels like she is finally, _finally_, free. Aside from the first time she felt the machine in her head and knew its intentions for her, she has never felt this way before. She knows the machine hasn't arranged this for her, knows that this is something new and unexpected and wonderful.

And just for her.

His hands are on either side of her head, and he gently pushes her back, like he needs to see her eyes.

She smiles at him, brilliant, and later he will tell her that he had never seen her look at him that way before, and that is how he knew. He'll tell her that she fills the places in him he hadn't known were empty. She's not a replacement for something he's lost, she's simply…her. She smooths out the edges, eases the tension in his shoulders, reminds him of the things he's fighting for. People who need their help, people who sometimes seem to be a lost cause, but who are as worthy as anyone.

He is honest enough to tell her that he didn't want it to happen, that he fought it for a long time. She can't be hurt at that, because she knows where he is coming from, she has felt the same. He tells her that one day he saw her step in front of a gun for someone they didn't know, not someone whose number they had, just a woman on the street who was being threatened by her ex-husband. And he tells her that he'd felt such incredible pride and abject terror in that moment, and that is when he knew he loved her, and he couldn't deny it anymore.

He also tells her that it had taken him a long time to make peace with Joss, to accept that she had wanted his happiness and hadn't wanted her death to be the end of him, too. He says that it makes him laugh when he thinks of Joss's reaction to the woman he'd gone on to fall in love with, and Root says they will have to ask her about it, when this life is over.

One day, they are again on the couch at Harold's, but the others are eating dinner and not paying them any attention. He asks her, out of the blue, when she fell in love with him. The rushed way he says it tells her that he has been wanting to ask for some time.

She mulls it over. "I don't know. I feel like it happened a thousand times in a thousand ways. Like it's still happening. If you'd asked me that before", (and she's referring to before they got along, before their team), "I would have told you I love broken things. I used to think the two of us could be a match, that way."

"You thought we were broken?" He is genuinely surprised.

She shrugs. "I thought a lot of things." She doesn't have to tell him that she now knows every way she was wrong.

He leans down to kiss her sweetly (they never linger too long here, it's a guaranteed way to get food thrown at them by Lionel and Shaw while Harold watches with disapproval and calls them all children).

His mouth lingers near her temple, his words a whisper. "I'm glad you know that was never true."

She tips her head back and smiles.

So is she.


End file.
